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The Merry Month of May

For the Tasting Room at Naggiar, the merry month of May is the start of the sizzling summer season. Yes, I’m in a bit of an alliterative mood here. This past weekend was our “new wine releases” weekend and the start of Winefest 2017…a time of great food, our amazing wines, and exciting live music and entertainment…basically the start of a three month long party. Now in the vineyards and winery, not too much partying going on. Currently recovering from the bottling two weeks ago, we just had our blending session in preparation for our next bottling in July. However, recovery doesn’t necessarily mean rest…there is plenty going on in the vineyards!

The last couple of weeks, the weather finally dried up a bit and we experienced a few mini heat waves. The heat paired with all of the rain we received over winter and spring has spurred vigorous growth. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned in the past, there is a big labor shortage of agricultural workers. So, our recovery from the winery is spent working in the vineyards. For the next few weeks, we will be doing shoot thinning to ensure proper shoot growth and re-positioning of spurs. Once this is done, we will start raising the trellising wire to accommodate the new growth.

Shoot thinning

As of now, we are a few weeks behind the last few year’s growing seasons- all of the cool, rainy weather led to a late start for everything. If things keep up and we don’t have an abnormally hot summer, it looks as if harvest won’t begin until the beginning of September- the first time in a few years that it hasn’t started in August. There is an old Chinese curse …”May you live in interesting times”. In viticulture and winemaking, it is always “interesting times”.